Hungarian Success at Hiroshima Animation International Film Festival

We are always pleased to report success for local talent abroad. Lately, Hungarian film-makers have won major prizes at festivals from Cannes to Karlovy Vary. The most recent triumph takes us quite far from Hungary, and indeed the European continent – all the way to Japan, where the short film Symphony no, 42, by film-maker Réka Bucsi, won the Hiroshima prize at the fourteenth Hiroshima International Animation Film Festival. After the main prize, the Hiroshima prize is the festival’s most prestigious award.

In their own words, the “Hiroshima International Animation Festival was established in 1985, as a project commemorating the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing. From the beginning, Hiroshima City and ASIFA shared a same idea, that is, to promote the international mutual understanding and to pursue eternal world peace through the development of animation art, which is a medium common to all human beings beyond nations and languages.”

The festival is a biennial, and this year attracted 2,110 entries from 63 countries and regions. Moreover, 34,715 people participated over the course of the five days of the festival. It is fitting that a Hungarian film won, as Hungary was the featured guest country this year. The Hiroshima prize totaled 1 million yen, just over 10,000 dollars. This year’s theme was “Love and Peace.” The six-person jury commented that Symphony no. 42 aptly reflected the theme, and cited its unique and original “animation language” as justification for the win. Bucsi, still in her twenties, studied at Budapest’s prestigious Moholy-Nagy University of Art, and clearly has a bright future here and abroad. It’s a huge win for the young film-maker, and one more reason to celebrate local talent.

source: hg.hu

Below you can find the teaser for the longer (though still short) film.

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

 

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Re-Oriented: The Orient Express Rides Again!

photo via irtsociety.com

The Orient Express: it conjures up images of elegance, intrigue, and luxury. The privately operated train is known as being the height of luxury train travel, and mode of transport for diplomats, stars, and the generally well heeled. Budapest has intermittently been a stop on the Orient Express, which since its inaugural trip in 1883, has seen several different routes around Europe and Asia Minor. Recently, Budapest and the Express haven’t had much orient in it, and many of the routes terminated in Vienna. But the train trip’s original ambition – to connect East and West, in the most luxurious way possible, has been restored, and even built upon, with the announcement that the Orient Express will now run a line from Budapest to Tehran. Yes, all the way through the Balkans, across Turkey, and into the heart of the Middle East. According to the site luxurytrainclub.com, this will be the first private train allowed to cross into Iran, and tickets for the two-week trip will go for as much as twenty-five thousand Euro per person. Known at the Golden Eagle Danube Express: Jewels of Persia, the train itself will be composed of period carriages and be drawn by a steam engine, provided by Hungarian rail company MAV-Start. This means refined, old-world luxury and elegance.

While the original Orient Express was in operation between 1883 and 1977, there have been several permutations and use of the name, as the brochure page above indicates. The  name Orient Express has found its way into numerous films and books, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ian Flemings’ James Bond title From Russia with Love, and most notably, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Film has also exploited the movable location, with From Russia With Love, Murder on the Orient Express, along with 102 Dalmatians, and Around the World in Eighty Days using the train as a backdrop. With the political intrigue that routinely surrounds Budapest and Tehran, we are sure there is at minimum a Murder on the Orient Express II, if not something more original in the offing. We’d write it ourselves, if only we had a free two weeks, preferably on a train, preferably on its way to Iran.

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

 

 

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“White God” Chosen as Hungary’s Foreign Language Oscar Selection

This isn’t a huge surprise, given the film’s success in Cannes, but it was recently revealed that Hungary has submitted Kornél Mundruczó’s feature-length film White God for the coming year’s Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. The news was announced by the Hungarian National Film Fund last week.

Heading the committee that chose the film as this year’s selection was Andrew Vajna, the famed producer of the Rambo and Die Hard series who returned to Hungary to become government commissioner for this country’s film industry. White God got the nod above a number of other films to gain acclaim this year, including György Pálfi’s Free Fall; also a festival-circuit favorite.

White God is Mundruczó’s sixth film, and centers around a young girl’s quest to re-unite with her pet a during a kind of dog revolution in Budapest; a story-line that has seen comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The film won the main award in the Cannes international film festival’s Un Certain Regard section this spring. It was notable for the use of over 200 dogs in the filming. Daily Variety called the film “a thrillingly strange update of the “Lassie Come Home” formula in which one lost mutt’s incredible journey to sanctuary evolves into a full-scale man-vs.-beast revolution.” The rave review goes on to praise the fantastic Hungarian technical craftsmanship: “Uniformly outstanding technical credits do full justice to this complex premise, with supple, elastic lensing and editing invaluable in realizing one story world shown from two alternating vantage points.”

The shortlist of titles for the Academy Awards will be announced on January 15 and the Oscars ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on February 22. It is our humble hope that White Dog will continue its success, and fetch the statue for Hungary and local film-making.

via imdb.com

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

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Stereo pictures (yes, more stereo pictures!)

First, we offer a mea culpa. We try to stay ‘on message’ regarding film culture in and around Hungary, but these stereo slides found on the blog of Budapest’s premier photo exhibition space – Mai Manó Hungarian Photography House – are too cool not to pass along. According to anerdsworld.com, these photos were actually taken by  a soldier in the French army during their World War I tour. Anersworld.com also did us all the favor or doing the 3-D rendering of the Verascope slides, turning the stereoscope pictures into GIFs. So, scroll down and enjoy this fascinating slice of history. And if you missed last week’s stunning display of stereo pictures from early 19th century Japan, keep scrolling down, or have a look here.

Fotó: Temetés

(source: Mai Manó photography house blog via anerdsword.com)

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

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Japan in Stereo

Oh is this ever a find. Via the blog of the Mai Manó Photography House, we discovered these wonderful GIFs, made to replicate the experience of looking at twined photographs through a Veroscope, a type of slide viewer which allowed one to see photographs in three dimensions. Called the 3D stereo camera, the Verascope was invented and patented in 1893 by Frenchman Jules Richard. What we are seeing below are GIFs made by photographer Soba Okinawa of the stereo slides of Japanese photographer T. Enami. The pictures were taken in locations around Japan somewhere between 1895 and 1910.

According to the Mai Manó blog, the photographer T. Enami was born in 1859 in Tokyo. During the Meiji era he was a student of one of the most important figures in Japanese photography, Ogawa Kazumas. In 1892 Enami opened his own showroom in Yokohama. His international success was assured when his hand-colored photos were published in places like National Geographic magazine, giving him an audience of millions.

Enjoy this modern take on a very old medium. And if you like them, be sure to return next week, when we will show off a series of World War I stereo-picture GIFs.

Photo: T. Enami: Geisha looking at stereo pictures.

 

Photo: T. Enami: Great Buddha of Kamakura

Photo: T. Enami: Torii gates at Inari Shrine, Kyoto

Fotó: T. Enami: Kitano temple, Kyoto

Photo: T. Enami: Lunch of the clam-hunters

Photo: T. Enami : Campfire at the top of Myogi mountain, Nakasendo

Photo: T. Enami: Geisha washing her hands in the garden.

Photo: T. Enami: Wanderer in the fog, Chujenji

Photo: T. Enami: Meeting by the gate

Photo: T. Enami: Untitled

(source: Mai Manó photography house blog via retronaut.co, fotomult.c3.hu)

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

 

 

 

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